Free To Choose — For Now

For a long time, the western world has largely accommodated competing religious views with a “whatever floats your boat” mentality. Religious pluralism has been respected, and the right to choose one’s own faith, or no faith at all, has been protected. Occasionally, tensions between competing points of view have run high, but differences have been generally resolved peaceably. As long as one’s religious views didn’t impinge on someone else’s rights or unduly infringe on the sovereignty of the secular civil sphere, most any religious viewpoint has been accommodated. Indeed, in an era that has exalted postmodern individualism and religious relativism, robust criticism of religious views have been generally deemed to be in bad form – unless, of course, you happened to be Bill Maher or a pundit for CNN or MSNBC and were targeting Catholics or Christian fundamentalists.

In the last decade, however, the West’s lassiez faire attitude towards religion has been challenged. On September 11, 2001, Islamic extremists, animated by their faith, committed mass murder in the name of jihad, and the world was changed forever. In the aftermath, the United States has been faced with a challenging conundrum: How to reconcile freedom of religion and religious pluralism with a deep-seated suspicion of a religion that — at least in some theological circles — mandates the murder and/or forced conversion of non-believing infidels?

According to Dictionary.com, religion is defined as “a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe.” Religion, then, deals with ultimate questions, and every religion purports to hold the key to ultimate truth. But, those keys unlock very different doors. Take the three Abrahamic religions for example. All three believe in one holy and almighty God, but this is where doctrinal unity comes to an end. Jews and Christians both recognize as true and canonical the books of the Torah but part ways with regard to the New Testament account of Jesus Christ, on which point Jews share with Muslims the belief that Christ was a great prophet, but certainly not the son of God. Christianity, for its part, is riven by various doctrinal differences too numerous to mention. Glenn Beck (cable news megastar and darling of the Tea Party movement) and Mitt Romney (former Governor of Massachusetts and current aspirant to the White House) subscribe to Mormonism, a religion that parts ways with orthodox Christianity with regard to the nature of God, the person of Christ, the nature of man, and the way to salvation. Indeed, most Christians view Mormonism as a heretical cult.

These theological divisions have been at the heart of many controversies and conflicts over the centuries, and they continue to spark divisions today. As the anniversary of 9/11 looms and national tensions are running high, news of a Florida church’s plan to burn the Koran in protest against Islam prompted a plea for restraint from General David Petraus and the State Department. Writing for Townhall magazine last week, columnist Michael Gerson pointed out that antagonism towards Islam — often led by evangelical Christian leaders — relies upon dishonest caricatures of the faith, jeopardizes the constitutional principle of religious liberty, and is antagonistic to the moral and ethical dictates of Christianity.

Mr. Gerson is understandably apprehensive about the provocative act set to occur in Florida this Saturday, and the State Department is justified in making the case that the burning of the Koran will directly jeopardize American diplomacy and the safety of our troops in the Middle East. But what is equally disturbing, however, if somewhat less obvious, is the growing sense that there is no room in our society for vigorous public debate about the merits of different religious viewpoints. It is considered rude and presumptuous to challenge the veracity of a competing religion’s beliefs.

Assuming, however, that there is an ultimate truth and that truth is knowable, an attitude of ambivalence with regard to religious belief is not prudent. One thing that the major religions do agree on is that there will be eternal consequences for the choices we humans make in the here-and-now. Faith in the true God will be rewarded, and error condemned. Therefore, no Christian, or Muslim, or Mormon for that matter, should be content to practice their faith in a vacuum. Those of us who believe in ultimate truth as ordained and embodied by God are compelled by our faith to make the case for our faith to the whole world. To remain silent is to allow the possibility for grave error to go unchallenged and the possibility for eternal reward to go unclaimed, or worse, for eternal punishment to be suffered.

The blessing of America is that we live under a constitution that celebrates the right for each and every person to speak freely in service to their deepest held beliefs. We should not allow any distorted sense of political correctness, or fear of militant reprisals, discourage us from exercising this cherished right. If we do, we may one day be forced to choose our faith at the barrel of a gun.

Ken Connor is the Chairman of the Center for a Just Society. An esteemed attorney, Connor is affiliated with the law firm of Marks, Balette, & Giessel, a firm nationally known for its successful representation of victims of nursing home abuse and neglect.

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It’s about time that we have the debate which this article outlines. And a very difficult debate it will be in the context of today’s USA.

The idea that truth is objective and knowable? People today would sooner fight over their local NFL team than assert this. Where do we even begin?

It will take a few more incidents like the one whose anniversary we observe today, I fear, before people wake up and discover who the enemy is, what motivates him, what forces he has at his disposal, and how vulnerable our culture is. And that there are certain religions which do not fall under the protections offered in our Bill of Rights.

It seems to me there are certain, particularly pagan, religions whose murderous religious practices and attitudes no sane person, including I believe our Founders, would give Constitutional protection to. Whether a major world religion with a billion followers falls into this category will, I predict, be a critical decision for our fair land to come to grips with, for its own survival.

A comforting thought to accompany this. Long after the demise of the United States of America, the Catholic Church will still stand, still be fulfilling its mission from Christ, however imperfectly.

http://prairiehawk.me PrairieHawk

It ought to be relatively simple to lead an open-minded person to the understanding that the truth is objective and knowable. If you know what you had for breakfast this morning, then you believe in objective truth. And then there is the argument from contingency, which is easy to explain: you and I did not have to exist; we depend for our existence on our parents, who met, and (hopefully) married and came together in marital union. And so on for them and their parents, all the way back to the first parents of the human race, which evolutionist and creationist alike agree must have been one man and one woman.

So those first two didn’t have to exist, but they did; you can at this point employ some evolutionist’s sleight of hand to say that a more primitive species “evolved” at this point to become our first parents, but this only removes the problem to the progenitors of the primitive species. No matter how you shake it, there was a creature, either a man and a woman or two apes or amoeba or what have you, that had no parents and didn’t have to exist, but did exist. So where did they come from? The traditional answer is that they came from some sort of God, a noncontingent Being whose existence is prior to everything else.

This exercise does not get us to the God of the Christian revelation; it gets us to a God who is a First Cause, which is a start. And if there is a God, then one would intrinsically recognize that He is closely associated with Truth, and then you can get into a discussion of whether that Truth is knowable or not. The biggest problem I see is helping relieve people who are committed to relativism of all their preconceived notions about religion, truth, and particularly religious truth (which gets relegated so often to a category of “personal opinion”) so that they will even listen to you.

Anyway, it’s not hopeless, but it does proceed one soul at a time. There are no shortcuts or quick remedies to turning an entire nation back to God, unless of course the Holy Spirit descends upon us and moves thousands or millions to conversion–also not impossible.

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